GP'79: Monza

Congrats podium.

This was my third distraction in a row that made me crash in a race. Last two races I DNF'shed but this time I committed to race till the end, no matter how bad the car was handling.

I had to pit twice, second one was on purpouse when I intentionally damaged the car to get it fixed and try to have a better handling, but as my 2nd pitstop didn't work as I pretended I crashed the car again to try a 3rd pitstop and then, the car was handling a bit better. Lost topspeed with that, but at least I could finish.

I had to really slow down everytime somebody was lapping me, so I finally couldn't push too much to recover the -2 laps with Erickson.

Well, the end of the season is near...

See you at Montreal.

Need CPR and some O2 here. Finished alive but it was hard work. Grats everyone!

LOL Johan..

Man..I thought I had this one in the bag. But it was not to be.

Qual in 2nd behind Emilio. Got off to a decent start and managed to hang on to him for a while at least. Slowly pulling away from 3rd I felt confident.

Let me stra by saying: I'm a big fan of Monza. One of my all-time favorite tracks. But I was frustrated with the elevation and cerbs of this Monza version. I usually love the lesmo corners and ascari as well. But not here. Just as I thought I had a rhythm I made a minor mistake..

Then around lap 20-25 or so I made the first big mistake. Coming out of the 2nd chicane I hit the right cerb a bit to much and got on the throttle a bit to early. Oversteer directly into the guard rails. Managed to crawl back on track with damaged front and left suspension.

Car was handling quite OK actually so I started pushing a bit and slowly gained on Milan. But Bas was closing in fast behind me.

Then the 2nd big mistake and also the last one. To early on throttle out of lesmo 1 and oversteer into the guard rails again. This time I lost the front wheel. Race over for me :-(

Man, if I'm to decide I'll never race this monza again ever.

Grats to finishers and especially teammates Emilio and Chris for 1-2 pos.

Probably won't make it to Montreal ,so my last race will be at Watkins Glen

Things were looking good heading into the race. I had the Ensign N177 running as a top 5 car, so Milan - tha main championship challenger - was just in the same lap time zone, so it was going to be an interesting race!

A poor qualifying run had me in 7th on the grid, but I wasn't too fussed about starting position. And picked up one or two spots before the 2nd chicane anyway.

But then the big boo boo came!
I have extremely good runs through the two Lesmo's, which is where I get my huge gains in lap times on all the other cars that don't do it so well, and as I ran through the 2nd Lesmo I was gaining on the car ahead fast, so I knew I could slingshot them down the long straight easily.
Except I powered to 100% a fraction too soon and the rear slid out, so I had to go into evasive action instead! And didn't do a very good job of it!

Off I spun and clipped the barrier which broke my front wing off.
And dropped my out to last and a fair way behind the field then! DOH!

A 2-4 wing setup doesn't really like 0-4 then! So it took a number of laps to work out what the car would do - or not do - so I could learn to drive it as fast as possible safely. So I had numerous errors and spins when the car was worse than I allowed for in those early laps, so time frittered away more and more!

Eventually I managed to get a hang of the car and could lap about 0.6sec off my practiced race pace, so that was not too bad, But it meant I could not catch too any cars ahead then!
Luckily a fair number retired and gave me the chance to finish 7th.
I should have been top 5 or 3 really, but so should some of the others who crashed out! So that is just the luck of the racing.

A good finish all in all, considering the first lap disaster!

A great surprise for me as I finished a lot higher than I would've thought. Managed to get through without any large offs for I think is my third race in a row so thats nice too.

Got off to a good start using the extra tarmac on the pit exit to get by slow cars. After things got settled I battled in times with Milan for the whole race, and it was really close after 50laps. :)

Congrats to Emilio who completely battered me in the race.

Peter: What times did you think you'd be able to do? Because I think you'd need a race best of atleast a 1:42 to get over 5th to be honest.

I was planning on finishing up this season, but I think I'm gonna have to immediately quit sim racing for a while. I keep catching myself thinking about everything but the braking point for the next corner. And that's just not something that would happen in a real car. It feels like the sensation of speed is gone and the race just isn't compelling enough to keep me focused. I don't even feel the least bit nervous at the start of a race anymore.

I apologize to Bas for punting him on lap 1. I didn't expect him to brake in the middle of the chicane, but he did have to make room for the car on his right and it was the sort of incident I'm sure I would have seen coming when I was on top of my game.

Ended my race when I got caught daydreaming coming into Parabolica. Easily one of the most daunting corners in all of motorsports, and I'm practically nodding off there! Yup, definitely time for a break.

It's been great racing with all of you. Good luck and have fun for the rest of the season.

YES...I survived my 2nd race LOL!!!
First, sorry to all with my bad start, came accross the field dangerously, but luckily it came out ok, but boy!!! theses cars are beast, i practiced a lot, but it kind of surprised me again!!!
then, i was driving carefully as i commited myself, if i can say, to finish the race, because i knew it would pay off...
I found that the tires wear quickly at first and then become very stable for a long period!! but before that, i'd kiss the wall and lost my front wing, and as i was thinking of stopping to have it fixed, to my surprise again, the car seemed to have a better balance and i was able to control it nicely, so i decided to stay and finished that way!!:)
Fun race everybody, you guys are nice!!!

Chris, Just out of interest:
Check my laptimes with no front wing, 1:40.9 best - my entire race is very much the same as Milans was (check the entire race laps results). Again, that was with the no front wing for every lap of the race.
I was gaining on lap times of all cars up to 4th through-out the race, though the fact I had to run at a ragged edge just to have a hope to get into the points (and thus no use racing at all if you did not push to the max to get that) meant many slip ups which ended up eating fair chunks of what I kept making up anyway.

Based on that I was pretty well equalling Milan's times, but with no wing, and I know I was running 0.6sec slower approx per lap than I could, I probably could have finished ahead of him if all went as well as it did - but with no first lap error of course. (eg a race with no damage).

I lost 34secs in those first three laps of the accident due to learning the cars added problems from the damage and imbalance, plus battling the back markers to get through them on those first bunch of laps. That 34secs alone would put me in 5th.
Then add another 45 laps or so of the whole race then being 0.6sec slower than normal due to the damage. So an easy 20secs approx. Enough to be 4th.
Which still does not include the many 1 to 2 sec slower laps when recovering from problems the more dangerous car caused.
eg 0.6sec is the slower time on a 'normal' lap, but even slower when skating into/through some area and needing to recover thanks to the half-lousy car.

My race time includes one case of run off track by a back marker who swerved across just as I went to pass them, so I careered off track and had to recover. Plus includes those number of high duress 'no front end grip' errors wasting a fair bit of time here or there. But these ones are somewhat race-typical so it is fine to just count them in the race time as "expected to occur" (tho I actually rarely do them really).

So based on all the actual lap times (mine and all others), just minus the initial crash delay time and ongoing slow down of it, I would say 4th or 3rd for sure.

I had a total of 55secs of "crash time delay" including one later spin/problem on lap19 (5 laps in total of 'excess' time loss). That alone puts me on Milans rear wing for total race time. Then re-add the 0.6sec/lap time loss = 20secs+ ahead of Milan. Which would even have had me plus/minus your own race time area - neck and neck. These are 'done' laps and 'done' crash times, so erase the lap 1 crash and its effects, and fill in the race on doing exactly as I did, and that extrapolates exactly where I would have been otherwise.
Of course other things could happen in the 'alternate race' too, tho I already had a 'worst case race' with damage and still did those 45 laps of lap times anyway thus just as likely I would have been just as steady, and more so, with a no damage car too.

@ Peter, eheh too many IFs, this is racing :), btw outstanding pace with that car!

Not a bad race , i just had to survive with my mexican taco car, damn it seems i must keep this also in Montreal, another bad modelled track.....

Well my first win!!! I had it in Kyalami too, that time my game crashed when on a 30 sec lead... but well at last I have a decent run without much errors. I did have a hell of a car adventage though... so just want to give my cumpliments to these guys:

- Valkovic: somehow managing to get decent grid start and score points on a car that's 3+ secs slower than the top cars... amazing man.
- Jansson and Milicevic: podium finish in low end cars... great job guys.
- Massa: fighting that Rebaque to get championship points... great job... are you replacing your "cousin" at Ferrari?

I think you all have your prize in the championship standings... but well the credit system makes hard for you to win races late in the season.